


America is...

by TheDameintheRaininMaine



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Depression, Except When It Isn't, F/M, Gen, Physical Disability, Recovery, Started as one thing, canon until early s4 AOS, morphed into a fix it, mostly endgame compliant, the snap and it's aftermath, the sort of little story the movie didn't have time for
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-23
Packaged: 2020-02-10 20:12:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18667549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDameintheRaininMaine/pseuds/TheDameintheRaininMaine
Summary: Everyone had the story of where they were when it happened.But all Shannon remembers is the truck.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story was shockingly easy to bring into MCU canon. Started as a one shot, but I'm going full fix-it fix now.

For years after, everyone went “where were you”. Everyone had a story, whether they were at school, or at home, or out shopping. They all had the stories of seeing friends and family disintegrate in front of them. 

All Shannon remembered was the truck.

Well, that wasn’t totally true. 

She had been on Third Street, just over from the house. Dad had told her that now she was riding well, that she shouldn’t ride on the sidewalk anymore, but on the street, and learn to signal and obey the same rules as a car. It made her nervous, but she did her best. 

It wasn’t totally true. She heard a yell, probably coming from one of the houses aside the road. She still wasn’t sure who it had been. She probably knew them. She didn’t think anything of it then, but she couldn’t figure it out, even now.

There was the first strike of impact and then blackness. 

That she was later able to piece together, from what people told her later. The plumbing truck, driving too fast in the first place, had lost it’s driver, and swerved. She had been struck from behind, thrown from her bike, and collided head first with the curb. But driver-less, the truck kept going, and she was in it’s way. 

Mrs. Collins had seen it happen, and called 911. This was before realizing both of her own children had vanished. It took too long for the ambulance to arrive, they later told her. She was hardly the only accident. 

When she finally woke up in the hospital, her first thought was wondering what happened to her bike. 

Everything was blurry, her whole body was one giant dull ache, and she couldn’t speak, there was something in her throat. When she finally started to come to, she strained, but couldn’t move. She lay there, all alone, for what seemed like a lifetime. When she could make out people in the room, she suddenly felt tears streaming down her cheeks. 

The two figures both wore scrubs and didn’t seem to realize she could hear them. 

“Ten year old female, collision between bicycle and motor vehicle. Fracture of the left tib/fib, closed fractures of the iliac wing and acetabulum, multiple cracked ribs, and considering all things, a fairly minor concussion.”

“Is she conscious?”

Shannon blinks. Apparently they don’t see. 

“She’s pretty doped up. It’s probably better she stay that way until Dr. Singh gets her into surgery.”

“Have we found her parents?”

“She came in here from Long Island. The ICE app on her phone says her name is Shannon Carter, but we haven’t been able to get through to anyone on her contact list yet.”

“None? Damn, poor kid.”

The tears really start flowing at this point. Why wouldn’t her parents have answered the phone? Even if they were at work, it was an emergency...And Uncle Dave’s number was in her phone too, and grandma…

At that moment, the nurse seems to notice her, and wipes her face off with a tissue, then fiddles with something off to the side, and Shannon’s world drifts away again. 

When she comes too again, the fog is still heavy, but she feels more centered. The nurse sitting at her bedside is in pink and has curly hair. Shannon tries to speak, but finds she can’t. 

The nurse notices her movement, and touches her head. 

“Don’t try to talk, there’s a tube in your throat to help you breathe, we’ll take it out later. Are you in pain? You should be able to nod, you’re neck is fine”. 

She doesn’t hurt, even if there’s something in the back of her mind telling her she should, but it feels far away. So she shakes her head 

“Good, that means the medicine we gave you is working.”

She then calls the doctor in, and they pull the tube from her throat. The doctor listens to her with a stethoscope. 

“Lungs sound good, your chest took a beating. Once the drugs wear off it’ll be pretty sore for a while”. 

Dazed, all Shannon can say is “I was wearing my helmet”. 

The doctor laughs, “That’s good, your head got bounced around a bit, but it seems OK now. Wearing your helmet was the best thing you could have done”. 

Then he adjusts some wires and she realizes there’s also a large cast around her hips. She had noticed, in an idle way, the cast on her left leg before, but this was new.

“Have you ever broken a bone before?” The nurse asks, after the doctor has left.

“Uhh, I broke my arm falling from the monkey bars in kindergarten.”

“Good, so you already know the routine with the cast.”

Shannon can feel her stomach sinking, and not just because she’s starving. 

“We have to go in and fix your hip surgically. The bits of bones are held together with pins and screws. The socket joint was hurt too, and the muscles and ligaments around it. It will take longer to heal than your leg, but when all is done, you should be back to 100%”

Her mind swims again. Pins and screws. Like she was a broken fence. Or some kind of cyborg. The nurse leaves, and comes back in a bit when another woman brings her her dinner tray. Shannon scarfs down the bologna sandwich in record time. Right now it’s the most amazing thing she’s ever eaten. Then she notices that the nurse is smiling somewhat nervously. 

“We got ahold of your aunt, she said she would be here as soon as she could.”

Aunt?

“But-” She hadn’t seen Aunt Sharon in two years. Mom and Dad had said she’d done something that got her in trouble and she didn’t think she could come back to the US without getting arrested. It didn’t make sense to her. Her aunt was a good person. She had taught her to play backgammon and crazy eights, and how to french braid her hair, and she worked in the government sure, but she couldn’t talk about her job much. She had thought it must have been a mistake. But she still hadn’t seen her in forever. 

And where were her Mom and Dad?

She tries to get info from her phone, but she has no signal and the hospital wifi isn’t working. She sends a few texts, but doesn’t get any responses. 

The hospital is horrible at night. It’s dark, but there’s beeping coming from everywhere. The nurses come in multiple times to check on her. She can’t get up, can’t even sit up properly. And she can’t sleep. And the ache in her chest is starting, amplified by the fear gripping her heart. What weren’t people telling her? Finally, she fitfully manages to drift off. 

She wakes up with a start when she hears the nurse talking again. Her heart leaps into her throat when she realizes she’s talking to Aunt Sharon. She’s cut her hair above her shoulders again, and is wearing an old t-shirt and sweats, but she’s still the greatest thing Shannon has ever seen. When the two notice Shannon is awake, Sharon moves to sit beside the bed and the nurse starts checking her monitors and writing on her chart. 

“Hey,” Sharon says, reaching out to touch Shannon’s head. Her voice is gentle, and careful. “I guess the new bike didn’t work out so well?”

Shannon’s eyes well up with tears. The bike had been a gift for her tenth birthday. It had ten speeds, hand brakes and gorgeous sparkly blue paint. 

“I guess it’s in pieces now?”

Sharon nods. “I went back to the house, the wreckage was still in the gutters.”

It shouldn’t still be there, someone should have moved it by now. It’s been….days, Shannon thinks. At least. Maybe. She’s not really sure. But she’s going to find out. 

Sharon opens her mouth to say something else, but Shannon cuts her off. 

“Aunt Sharon, what happened? Why aren’t Mom and Dad here, and why does everyone look so sad?”

Sharon took a deep breath, and didn’t quite meet Shannon’s eye. This worried her. Sharon was never the type to sugarcoat things for the kids, she believed in honesty. 

“Do you remember that UFO that appeared over Manhattan a few days ago?”

She does, sort of. That really ought be something that should stick out to her more, but strange things have kind of become a mainstay of living in the New York area, and this one hadn’t seemed too out of the ordinary. 

“Yes”. 

“Well the aliens on it- yes, aliens are real- had been gathering powerful items from across the galaxy, so they could create a device that would wipe out half of all living things. Everywhere.”

That sounds so stupid. Sharon must know it, it was probably much more complicated. But-

“Everywhere?” Shannon asks, her voice wavering. 

Sharon nods. 

“Mom and Dad….”

“I went to the house. I called both their works. Both were seen by people. I saw it happen to others. People dropping, turning into dust. It’s awful.”

Shannon’s eyes are wide. 

“Grandma and Grandpa? What about Uncle Dave….”

Another shake of the head. 

“It’s just you and me now.”

Sharon puts her hands on her shoulders, and after checking the wires attached to the monitors, leans in carefully and hugs her. 

“I’m so glad you’re still here kid, I thought I was all alone.”

Shannon barely has the energy to hug back. 

Sharon has a deck of cards in her pocket, and beats her twice in old maid. 

“Didn’t realize I had gotten that good. I’ve been staying with a colleague’s mother in Scotland the last few years. I’m not exactly a well known face, but I still had to stay inside too much. She taught me every card game she knew.”

She’s rambling a bit, trying to get Shannon to talk. She should be hanging on her words, she had been desperate to know what her aunt had been up to since she’d seen her, but she just can’t. 

She ekes out a 

“You can now?”

Sharon snorts. “General Ross is gone. And if anyone else cares enough about me to bother….well, they have bigger fish to fry.”

It doesn’t do much to help Shannon’s mood. 

Later, when Sharon gets up to leave, she asks her. 

“Do you want me to bring you anything? Should I grab the Chinese checkers board so we can play something you might win?”

“That sounds fine,” Shannon whispers. When Sharon finally leaves, she starts crying again. It doesn’t last long. Her eyes feel dry as marbles. 

Sharon stuffs a duffel with Shannon’s clothes, and her laptop, and yes, the Chinese checkers board. It does feel better to be in her own pajamas, even if wearing them in the hospital feels wrong. 

It all feels wrong. The next two and a half weeks are the worst of Shannon’s life. Nothing seems to bring her up. She barely eats, and sleeps fitfully. She has no interest in what the nurses tell her, and only reluctantly lets the doctors lead her in her exercises. 

Sharon stays with her as much as she’s allowed. It will take time, she says, to get back her apartment in Brooklyn, with the chaos. They play cards, and Chinese checkers, and watch old movies on her laptop. She stays outside visiting hours. No one much cares. 

Shannon’s ribs begin to burn, and her hip makes her shriek every time she so much as wiggles. They give her pain meds, but are conservative, because they don’t know if they’ll be able to keep getting them delivered. 

Half the doctors, half the nurses. Half the patients too. The surgeon who’d fixed Shannon’s hip had come all the way from New Jersey. It’s worse outside, Sharon says. It had been harder, according to her, to get into Brooklyn than it had been to get back into the US. There were stories of buses that lost drivers, planes that lost pilots. Everyone was lost. 

One day, during a rather slow game of War, Sharon gets a phone call. Her eyes go wide looking at the screen, and she gets up and answers in the hall. Shannon can only partially hear the conversation.

“Oh thank God. I couldn’t get through before...no. It’s just Shannon and me.”

There’s a bunch of mumbling, and the sound of Sharon pacing. 

“Could you? I really think it would help her if you would talk to her. I would be great to see you too.”

She doesn’t think too hard about it. Hadn’t even considered the possibilities. 

To say she was surprised when Captain America showed up in her hospital room, was putting it mildly. 

She had met him once before, but she had been seven. Mom and Dad hadn’t let her go to Great-Aunt Peggy’s funeral, but she’d been at the wake. Mom had said something to Aunt Sharon that made her turn bright red, either with anger or embarrassment or both, and the three of them had quickly left. He wasn’t in uniform now, was dressed casually and looking as run down as Shannon felt. Of course, half the world was gone. People he knew too. 

He introduces himself, ever polite. She’d heard that about him. Her throat is sandpaper dry, and she swears she can feel her heart rate monitor beeping faster. She should say something, she really should. 

“Do you know how to play Chinese checkers?” is what comes out of her mouth. 

She can see Sharon laugh softly behind Steve’s back. He shakes his head. 

“Can’t say I do, you’ll have to teach me.”

The three of them play, and Shannon is transfixed. He looks so different than he does on TV. He’d been on TV a lot recently, maybe she should ask…

“What happened in Berlin? Why did Aunt Sharon have to hide for two years.”

He looks a little shocked, Sharon laughs. 

“She’s ten, she pays attention.”

After a minute to consider, he says, 

“People in charge told me to do something, that in good conscience I could not. Some of my friends wouldn’t either, and because they wouldn’t, they were put in danger and I had to help them. Your aunt helped me help them, and we all got in trouble. “

“That sounds like the summary on the back of a very long book”. 

“This is true.”

“Can you tell me the long version?” She asks, giving him pleading eyes. 

Steve glances aside at Sharon. 

“It might take a while.”

Shannon gestures down at her casted leg. 

“Not like I’m going anywhere.”

She laughs at her own joke and then winces. 

“Cracked ribs?” Steve asks her. She nods. 

“I had whooping cough when I was twelve. Spent three weeks in the hospital, broke three ribs from cough. It was horrible.”

“It was?” Shannon asks warily. Captain America is supposed to be the pinnacle of health. He’s on posters for vaccination in this very hospital. It’s hard to imagine him ever being down or sick. 

“I used to get sick all the time. Before the army gave me the serum, I was probably about the same size you are. I was a sickly little shrimp as a kid.”

Shannon suddenly has questions, tons of them. She wants to ask him everything. But before she can even open her mouth, his phone goes off. 

He’s only in the hall for a moment, before coming back. 

“That was Nat,” he tells Sharon. “Sensors picked up Danvers in the outer atmosphere. We may have gotten Stark back.”

Shannon’s suddenly lost again. 

Before Steve leaves, he pulls a piece of paper out of his pocket and scribbles on it. 

“I’m still getting used to this email thing, and I might get busy soon, but if you ever want to talk, you can send me an email.”

Holding the paper Shannon can feel her whole face light up like a Christmas tree and she can barely breathe. 

After he leaves, Sharon finally breaks the silence. 

“Did you listen to Aunt Peggy’s stories about him from the war?”

“Sort of” Shannon admits, “I don’t remember everything.” There’s another pause. 

“Can you tell me them?” she tries not to sound too excited. 

“Of course.”

During dinner, Shannon finally asks something that’s been pressing on her mind. 

“Is he your boyfriend?”

Sharon laughs, and kind of hides her face. Shannon’s never seen her aunt embarrassed before, it’s surreal. 

“No.”

A really long pause, that Shannon feels if she stares long enough will end. 

“He did kiss me once.

“...What was it like?”

“...Pretty great”.


	2. Chapter 2

Tony Stark’s rescue is all over the news for a week.

It’s a nice break, to be sure, even if it’s as depressing in it’s own way as the endless coverage of people disappearing. He looks as haggard as Shannon feels. 

“He only has one IV!” She announces during one broadcast with a shot of him being wheeled into the ambulance on a gurney. “I’ve got like three, and all these monitors!”

“Well he starved for three weeks in space, he didn’t get manhandled by a truck.” is Sharon’s response.

Three weeks. All that reminds Shannon is how long she’s been stuck in the hospital. The doctor had said they would have kicked her out by now, under usual circumstances, but now that they had the all the space they could need, they wanted to make sure there was no internal bleeding and she was healing properly. 

And it was driving Shannon batty. 

When the day finally comes, she’s practically bursting to see the outside world. 

That excitement is quieted rather quickly. 

The hospital she’s in is 20 minutes down the orange line from Sharon’s old apartment. The train cars are close to empty. The few people sitting on the seats don’t make eye contact. Well, it’s not like people on the subway ever did, but it feels more pronounced.

Outside the station, trash is piled up on the road in bags. Cars along the road have tickets piled a dozen thick. Missing signs are freshly taped up in telephone poles.

“Trash pickups been disrupted. Most city services have been. Buses and trains are late constantly. Schools are all closed. Parks aren’t, but most of them are a huge mess.” Sharon explains idly. Some of this Shannon had assumed (someone for sure, would have bugged her about school if she was supposed to go back), but some of it she never thought about.

Plus, it turns out navigating a wheelchair on Brooklyn’s sidewalks is a huge pain. Every bump makes Shannon feel like she’s about to knock her teeth out. She even feels the part of a true NYC from the glares she gets for taking up more than her share of the sidewalk.

By the time they reach the apartment building, Shannon’s arms are aching. It had only been a few blocks, and then, they run into yet another roadblock. 

“Aw hell,” Sharon says hand on one hip, staring at the elevator with the “out of order” sign taped. 

She puts a hand on Shannon’s shoulder, and mutters, “I’ll go try and find the super...I hope he’s not dust.” 

Shannon feels tiny alone in the hallway. She too, stares at the elevator. It seems like such a small thing. 

“You can take the freight elevator,” a voice behind her says. 

Shannon turns her head to see the voice came from a boy about her age holding a basketball. 

“Is it broken a lot?”

The boy nods, 

“I can show you where it is.”

“We should wait for my aunt to come back, or she’ll wonder where I went.”

He turns and leans against the wall beside her. He tucks the ball into his backpack.

“I haven’t seen you here before, are you new?”

Shannon nods. 

“I’m moving in with my aunt. My parents both...well”

She pauses, the boy nods, 

“I’m from Long Island actually, this whole place is new to me.”

“It’s not so bad. Didn’t used to be at least.”

Shannon pauses, wondering if it’s okay to ask him the next question. 

“Are..are your parents…”

“Still here. Yeah, both of them. We lost my uncle though. My dog too.”

His dog. Shannon had not spared a thought to the animals. This whole thing is so alien, which makes some kind of sense.

Sharon returns at this point, by herself and looking irritated.

“No sign of the super, whatever that means.”

“He’s not dust,” the boy says, “but he’s probably asleep somewhere”. 

“He,” Shannon starts, pointing with her thumb, “...what was your name?”

“Miles,” he says, stepping up from the wall. 

“Shannon.” she responds, “He was saying we can use the freight elevator.”

Miles leads them down the hall and around the back. 

“I only know this is here because my mom makes me help Mrs Perez with her groceries, cause she’s only got one leg.” he says, when get to the huge metal door. It takes him some effort to crank the handle that lifts it. 

“Make sure you shut it when you get out, or it won’t open for anyone down here.”

The inside is dark, and the noise is nerve-wracking. Shannon is ecstatic when they get to the third floor, and is looking even more forward to the days when she can just take the stairs. 

Miles cranks the door closed, then turns around. 

“I’m going to play some ball down the street, do you want to come?”

Suddenly feeling shy, and quite tired to be honest, Shannon declines.

“Ok then, see you around.”  
He leaves, and Shannon asks Sharon. 

“Are there a lot of others kids around here?”

“There were when I was here before, there was even a charter school opening a stop down the red line, but I don’t know about now.”

Most of Sharon’s things are still in boxes, dusty from storage. She tosses her bag on the couch, which she’s already folded out and made. 

“I’ll give you the bedroom, it’ll be easier to get to the bathroom if you need to. We’ll go by the house sometime this week to get some more of your things.”

“There wasn’t anyone living here yet?”

Sharon laughs, touching the ugly patterned wallpaper. 

“This unit is SHIELD property, used for whatevers needed. If it was needed, it’s not anymore”. 

Sharon’s pantry only has food on one shelf. She’s only gotten to go to the store yesterday. They have canned soup and sandwiches for dinner. The grilled cheese is good, if a little done on one side. 

“I’m not exactly a gourmet, but I should be able to keep us fed at least.”

“Can I watch TV?” Shannon asks when they’re done. 

“The cables not hooked up, but if you wiggle the antennae enough you should be able to get something. I’ll go downstairs and see if I can get the wifi login in a bit”. 

The antennae only gets four channels in English. One’s playing a sitcom that’s older than Shannon and the others are the news, but it’s something. 

All their talking about is Tony Stark’s engagement. 

“Huh, Pepper finally tied him down, how bout that?” is Sharon’s take on it. 

“You’ve met him right?”

Sharon sits on the couch beside her, moving her pillow to clutch it in her lap. 

“Couple times when I was a kid. He came to some of the things Aunt Peggy planned with the kids and grandkids of the other Howling Commandos.”

“What’s he like?”

“Last I saw him? Kind of a prick.”

She stares at Tony’s emaciated face on the screen. He looks like hell, and his eyes have taken on a ten thousand yard stare that’s not broken no matter how gently he clutches Pepper’s hand as they speak of their desire for a small, private ceremony. 

“Then again, he spent nearly a month starving in space. That could make anyone reevaluate their lives.”

A little later, Sharon makes good on her work to go and get the login information for the unit’s wifi. When she returns, and passes the info on to Shannon, she says, 

“I’ve got a friend dropping by later, do you want to put on a movie or something? It will probably be super boring, work stuff.”

“I think I’ll just get in my pajamas and hang out for a while.”

“Let me know if you need any help”. 

The room is small, just the bed, an empty dresser, and a desk no bigger than the one she had at school with a single lamp. The duffel bag of clothes and other things Sharon had brought from the house were on the chair. The rest of the room is bare, no pictures or knick-knacks. The bed linens are as bland as you might find in a motel and the blinds are anonymous. 

She wonders how her aunt could have stood living like this. 

She retrieves her nightshirt from the duffel and rolls to the bathroom. She soaks a washcloth to bathe herself. She has never wanted to take a shower so badly in her life, but the doctor had said not for at least a week, or until her incision was more fully healed. And when that happened she was supposed to shower sitting in a chair, no matter how weird that was. 

Using the bathroom and changing takes her an embarrassingly long time. She misses her fish and dolphin print pajamas, but negotiating with pants is enough of a struggle during the day, so the night shirt wins. Brushing her teeth goes normally, at least until she has to spit and has to find a way maneuver her face over the edge of the sink. It’s a struggle to rinse out after, but she manages not to miss.

She’s about ready to get in bed when she realizes the bed here is too high for her to be able to get into from the chair by herself. God this sucks. 

When she rolls back out, she hears part of the conversation going on. The other woman is young, with short dark hair. They’re sitting at the table holding mugs next to a stack of paper. 

“May too?”

The other woman nods, “May, Fury, Hill. Mack and Elena are fine though, we could have been hit way harder.”

“Is that why they’re taking me back?”

“I’ve even heard talk of finding any wiggle room to find and drag Bobbi and Hunter back.”

“SHIELD’s most wanted and a wanted felon, nice”. 

“Felon nothing, folks around DC were even tossing around the phrase ‘war criminals’”

“Lovely”. 

Shannon finally has the courage to interrupt. 

“Aunt Sharon?” God this is embarrassing, “...can you help me get into bed?”

“Sure,” she says, getting up, “Daisy was just leaving.”

“I should,” Daisy says, gathering her things. “Oh, one more thing.”

She pulls an envelope from her bag and hands it to Sharon, who opens it. She laughs. 

“Fitzsimmons finally decided to tie the knot?”

“They said if they both managed to survive half the universe being vanished than it was obviously a sign to hurry the hell up.”

She claps Sharon on the shoulder, and turns to Shannon. 

“You’re Shannon right?” 

She nods. 

“Sorry to weigh down your aunt with a massive pile of busy work, but it’s a mess of a world out there and we need her help to try and bring it back.”

Daisy leaves, and Sharon follows Shannon into the bedroom.   
“Arms up, like at the hospital.”

Shannon grabs onto her and Sharon lifts and drags her onto the mattress with an oof. 

“Oh, I am so out of shape.”

“Who are Fitzsimmons?” Shannon asks, trying to change the subject. 

“Fitz and Simmons, couple of scientist I met working for SHIELD. At the academy we used to joke that one of these days they were going to spend too much time in the lab and merge into a two-headed hell beast named Fitzsimmons. Marriage is pretty close.”

She fluffs Shannon’s hair, then grabs her laptop off the desk. 

“You should check your email, Steve told me earlier he was going to send you a link to something that he thought might cheer you up.”

Wondering what it could possibly be, Shannon opens the laptop and logs in. She only had one email to open, so it’s an obvious choice. 

It’s a single link to a page on archive.org

“Thought and Sharon might get a kick out of this, though please take it with an enormous grain of salt. Artistic license is very much a real thing.”

When she opens the page, she reads it off to Sharon. 

“The Captain America Adventure Program.”

Sharon starts laughing so hard she starts to cough, and says with a wheeze, 

“Grain of salt is right. They used to trot these out on anniversaries on NPR and places like that sometimes. I had never heard Aunt Peggy so mad as when she listened to these.”

She claps Shannon on the shoulder, and hands her her headphones from the bag.

“Don’t listen to too many, they’ll rot your brain. And don’t stay up too late, you may not have to go to school, but I’m not just going to let you sit around here until you heal”. 

Sharon turns out the light. Shannon starts the first file. She can’t listen long. They style is odd and the voice of Captain America is so obviously not the man she met recently that it’s ridiculous. She also bristles at the depiction of an obvious expy of her Aunt Peggy as a smiling, submitting, triage nurse. 

She takes off her headphones to try and sleep. Whatever tomorrow throws at her can’t be as bad as knowing this is what the world thought of you.


	3. Chapter 3

It takes exactly two days for Shannon to start going crazy.

Shannon was an active child. She played soccer, and rode her bike. She had wanted to learn to swim. She was not prepared to stay inside all day, and it was going to drive her up the wall. Sharon had kept to her promise to not let her be idle, and between the two of them, had opened all her moving boxes and put everything away. 

Sharon and herhad made another trip out to Long Island, in a borrowed van. Getting herself in was actually reasonably easy, but the trip out of NYC was not. The streets were desolate in spots, with nary a car to be seen, and others were filled to the brim, with people unused to the commute, and with debris from accidents, trash and junk piled up. 

When they finally get to the house, Shannon was suddenly struck by how little of her things she wanted to move. Her comforter didn’t fit Sharon’s bed, but she did retrieve her favorite stuffed bear. Many of her toys too, seemed to belong to someone else. The sight of her roller skates borders on mocking. Her clothes were easy enough. A couple family pictures, and after a long thought, a poster she had from a Stark Industries young inventors fair she had been to. Something to give her room personality. 

It was sort of nice really, to be able to start over. 

They pass the remains of her bike, still on the side of the road. Sharon stops to move it, saying she’ll find a dumpster or a scrap yard to deal with it somehow. While still in the van, Shannon sees Mrs Collins wave out her front window, staring off into space.

Thankfully, it seems Sharon resents the stillness almost as much as her. 

“Two years of drinking tea and playing cards, and least I was in a new place and alert for orders.” she told her one day, going through the paperwork Daisy had left her with. 

“What are they having you do?” Shannon asks. She doesn’t know very much about Sharon’s work, but from the hushed way adults always spoke of it, she guesses it was more exciting than paperwork. 

“They’ve been keeping files on reports of people with special powers for years,” Sharon says. Shannon doesn’t comment, even though it is somehow both exciting and vaguely scary. Not only that it would be so cool to suddenly be able to fly or read minds, but to know there were people in the government whose entire job was keeping an eye on you. 

Sharon continues, “And I get to organize the files and make phone calls and emails trying to figure out which ones are even still around, much less who might be a threat.”

Oh. That both sounds terribly dull and incredibly depressing. 

On the third day of the week, she gets a brief reprieve in the form of grocery shopping. They take the bus two stops to the nearest bodega. Getting strapped in by the driver is bizarre, and Shannon spends most of the trip wondering if the straps have ever broken before. 

The shop is...bizarre. The milk freezer is half empty. An employee is stacking an entire pallet of just eggs as high as he can. There’s not a single banana to be found. 

“Emergencies make people panic, and they don’t always think things through. Those bananas will be bad within a week,” she grabs a bag of potatoes and hands them to Shannon, “Here, potatoes last a while.”

“How do you know all this?” Shannon asks when Sharon gives her a carton of eggs.. 

She laughs. “There is nothing like coming home from tailing someone in Copenhagen for three weeks only to find that the Chinese take out in your fridge is one step away from growing legs and walking away”. She grabs a loaf of whole wheat bread too. “We’ll have to freeze part of that”. 

Sharon picks generously from the fresh fruit and vegetables. 

“This stuff might become hard to come by eventually. I can’t say I’m an expert, but something tells me getting shipments of this stuff fresh in New York might be an issue with half the workforce gone.”

They end up with a somewhat unwieldy number of bags, but Sharon manages to get the big ones tied to the back of Shannon’s wheelchair, and they make it home without breaking or losing anything. 

They had also stopped at the deli and gotten sandwiches, so dinner that night was no issue. The deli had been totally out of pickles. 

The next morning, Sharon’s gotten up early and made French toast. 

Shannon eyes it warily. 

Sharon hands her her plate and smiles apologetically. 

“Today’s your first physical therapy appointment.”

Shannon slumps forward in her chair and groans. 

She dresses in sweats and a tank top, and barely says a word on their trip to Brooklyn Presbyterian. 

The waiting room is sterile smelling, though the only other patient waiting is an older woman who coughs every three seconds. 

It doesn’t take long until the assistant calls Shannon in, and pulls Sharon aside to do some paperwork. 

Dr. Reeve is a tall woman with a dark ponytail. She smiles a lot, but seems preoccupied. She asks her a ton of questions, some of which seem out of place (does she smoke or drink? She’s ten years old for god’s sake!). 

She pokes and prods her all over, just like a regular doctor’s office. When she gets to her chest, she presses her hands under Shannon’s arms and tells her to take a deep breath. She squeezes hard enough to make her squeak. 

“Sounds like your ribs are almost better,” Dr. Reeve says with another smile. Shannon rubs her chest until the ache goes away. 

Then she puts the charts away and has Shannon get out of her chair and sit on a mat on the floor with her legs extended. 

“Okay, now point the toes of your right foot.”

Shannon does so, confused. 

“Now keep your leg straight and move it out to the side.”

She finally asks. 

“But my left side’s the hurt one.”

The doctor laughs. “I need a baseline of what’s normal for you.”

So Shannon sighs and keep going. 

When that series of exercises is done, Dr. Reeve taps the cast over her foot and says, 

“Now lets see how bad it is.”  
Toes, hip, leg lift, knee bend. 

The toes is the only one that doesn’t hurt. 

Dr. Reeve is nodding, making notes and muttering about “range of motion”, while Shannon can barely catch her breathe. Moving her leg outward had made it feel like it was going to come loose. Lifting it had sent shots of white hot pain through her. She tries to ignore it, tries to think of anything else as Dr. Reeve writes and gives her some notes. 

“Repeat these exercises at least four times a day. Do as many reps as if feels like you can, write down how many that is, and I’ll see you next week.”

Shannon takes the paper, stunned. Four times a day. The pain is still ghosting throughout her leg.

Sharon kind of shakes her head when they leave. 

“You can really tell she’s not used to working with kids.”

“What?”

Sharon glances back down at her, “There were only two pediatric physical therapists in this borough, and they’re both gone. So you get Christina Reeve, who specialized in college athletes with sports injuries.”

Dinner is a somber affair. Afterwards, Sharon puts a movie on while she tries to do more work.

Shannon wrinkles her nose. 

“Ugh, black and white.”

Sharon barely looks up from her laptop. 

“You gonna hang around me, you have to appreciate the classics. Now watch the Twilight Zone and do your exercises.”

Shannon squeezes herself into the gap between the couch and the TV and tries follow the directions from earlier. She makes exactly four reps of each before her eyes threaten to betray her and fill with tears. 

She stares at her bed later, waiting for Sharon to help her in. She could probably slide herself, twisting and flopping, and get in herself. But she knows it would hurt now, and it hardly seems worth the effort. 

Three more days pass, until Sharon finally lets out a noise of frustration and pushes her laptop away on the table. Shannon stops at the noise, she’d been trying, once again, to text all her old friends. 

Sharon stands up. 

“I’m going to go crazy if I don’t get out of here. I’m going to the park for a run. Probably not what you want to hear right now, but you’re probably nuts too. You coming?”

Shannon doesn’t really need the push.

Not to say that it doesn’t hurt a bit, seeing Sharon in her workout pants warming up before she starts her first lap. Sharon had complained about feeling flabby and out of shape from two years worth of tea and cards, but she certainly looks to Shannon like a well-oiled machine.

The park is, at least, wheelchair accessible throughout pretty much all of it. It’s the first week of May, and it truly is a beautiful day. She feels a twinge passing the sandbox, but playing in it would have felt weird even if she were able. She briefly considers the tether ball poles, but there’s no one else playing. The only people she even notices in the park are a couple other errant joggers and a few old men playing chess.

Her savior comes when she spots Miles by the wall next to the basketball courts. He’s by himself, and not playing, his ball sits on the ground by his feet. 

“Whatcha doing?” She asks, rolling up beside him. 

The top of the wall has graffiti scrawled along it. “Where did they go?” it demands. 

Miles has a piece of chalk and has started a list of names. 

“TV says the government’s trying to figure out who’s gone and who’s not. Thought I’d help.”

He holds the piece of chalk out to her.

“Want to add anyone?”

Shannon takes the chalk. She can’t reach as high as Miles, but the asphalt is still clear at her height. The chalk scrapes give her shivers as she writes the names. Her parents, grandma, grandpa, Uncle Dave. Ava Roquefort, her best friend. Michelle Reynolds from across the street. Jacob and Aiden Collins. And all her classmates who she’s been trying to reach for these weeks. 

“Hey,” Miles says, nudging her arm and gesturing across the playground. “Is that...Captain America talking to your aunt?”

Shannon turns her head to look. Huh, it actually is. Steve looks a little worse for the wear, in a t-shirt and sweats, and when him and Sharon see them and start towards them, Shannon notices he’s got 5 o’clock shadow. 

“Oh yeah, he’s from Brooklyn, and was living around here a while ago, before all that stuff on the news. You’re not like, going to hound him for a picture are you?” Shannon asks, a little concerned. She had been kind of star-struck before, but has calmed down since, and feels almost protective Steve had actually struck her as a bit shy. 

Miles snorts with laughter. “Who would want a picture with the dork from those ‘don’t do drugs’ PSAs”. 

Steve and Sharon are close enough to hear it seems. 

“Please tell me they don’t actually use those,” Steve asks, rubbing the back of his head self consciously, “I’m really the last person to tell you to stay away from untested chemicals.”

Miles has the presence of mind to look a little embarrassed and keep his mouth shut. 

Shannon reaches out the chalk to Sharon. 

“Wanna add anyone?””

Sharon pauses, gazing up. 

“This was all just from you two?”

Shannon and Miles nod. 

“Really puts things in perspective a bit.” Steve says, reaching for the chalk when Sharon’s done.

When they’re done, the list spans the height of the wall in a single column, with room for a lot more. Miles sets the chalk on the ground. 

“In case someone else wants to add.”

“How do we know the city won’t just come by and hose it off?” Shannon asks. 

Steve stares up at the list. 

“I don’t think they will.”

They leave the park, and it looms behind them in the distance.

Steve walks with them home, and Shannon asks. 

“So why are you here? Don’t they need help at the big tower upstate trying to figure everything out?”

Steve sighs. 

“We’ve investigated all it sees like we can. Doesn’t seem like there’s much we can do, at least now. And...it’s emptied out. Thor, Tony and Banner are off doing their own things. Nat’s the only one who’s been staying there much.”

He turns to Sharon. 

“You should stop by and talk to her sometime.”

“So are you moving back to Brooklyn?” Shannon asks, a little eager. 

“My old apartment’s taken,” He starts. 

“Though the sixty year old Cuban woman has shockingly similar tastes in music to you,” Sharon interjects.

“But there’s one on the ground floor. Thought I’d move back slowly, maybe try to help some people out down here on the ground.”

They’ve reached the front of the apartment building. 

“If you’re going to be so close, you should stop by more often.” Sharon says, gesturing up with her thumb. “Keep the two of us from losing our minds, and help me force some culture on this one.”

Shannon wrinkles her nose. 

“Have you ever seen the Twilight Zone?”

Steve laughs. “Can’t say I have. It was on my list though.”

“That’s because I put it there,” Sharon teases. “If you’re not busy, we could make some sandwiches and watch a few.”

To her surprise, Steve agrees. Shannon had kind of thought an Avenger would be someone who was always busy. She watches her aunt’s face as they head up. She’s lonely, Shannon realizes. She should know, she is too. She thinks of how Steve sounded earlier, and the wall in the park. The whole world was lonely now, she guessed. 

“And don’t forget your exercises,” Sharon adds, as she grabs the sandwich fixings. Shannon groans, and tries not to look like a wimp in front of Captain America. 

When she grunts in pain, he gives her a hand to pull up with. 

“Does anything hurt after getting the serum?” she asks, pulling herself back in the chair. 

“Seems like since then everything hitting me has been bigger. And getting the serum hurt like crazy. Even getting used to being tall and muscular was bizarre.”

Sharon brings in their sandwiches and turns on the TV. 

This episode doesn’t bore Shannon as much as the others had. The title card calls it “Walking Distance”. 

Shannon tilts her head at the TV when Martin Sloan returns to the drug store and his own time, remembering his own words of “was it really so bad?”

“Gotta say, I did not expect it to end like that.” Shannon comments. 

Steve agrees quietly, but looks oddly enraptured by the screen. Sharon switches to the next episode. 

“That one might have touched a nerve,” She says, getting up to take their plates. 

Shannon stretches as much as she can in the chair. She misses the couch.

“Adults always say you’ll miss the old days when they’re gone, “ she comments to Steve. She slaps one of the wheels on her chair. “Don’t know how I’m going to miss this.” She thinks back to the empty park and the handmade memorial. 

“Rose colored glasses” he says, broken loose from the trance. “Lots of the past looks better when you’re passed it yourself.”

“Maybe we should take the kid’s advice,” she comments, thinking of adult Martin’s limp, "Try and find the carousels and band concerts now". It feels cheap almost, saying something like that, with the world outside, but this at least feels nice. 

“That’s a good idea,” Steve agrees. Then he has to go and add. “Don’t you need to do another round of your stretches?” 

Shannon mutters unkindly things under her breath as he helps her onto the floor.


	4. Chapter 4

Summer comes eventually, then slowly turns into autumn.

The power services continue being unreliable, and three times the power goes out. Thankfully, these were always during the day, but it still left the entire borough in the sweltering New York City summer heat. 

“I remember Mom and Dad telling me when I was little about what summers in the city were like before air conditioning,” Sharon muses one of these days and she opens the two windows in the apartment. There’s a fan, but without power, it can’t be plugged in. 

“How did they handle it?” Shannon’s gazing at the clean white tile on the kitchen floor, wondering if it would be worth the effort to pour herself out of her chair to lay on it. 

“People who could afford to went upstate to resorts, like the one in Dirty Dancing.” The heat has rendered Sharon’s hair sweat-curly and it’s sticking to her neck. “The rest of the city just suffered. Story is that crime always went up in the summer. All of New York was different then. It’s hard to describe really.”

When the electricity comes back on, it’s like they’ve all returned to civilization.

Shannon’s leg itches like crazy. It’s all she can do to stop herself from using anything- a coat hanger, a pencil, a fork, to dig into it and try to get some relief, but Sharon has an eagle-eye.

“Cut it out, you’ll tear up the skin and it will itch more when it scabs up.”

And so she settles for scratching at the skin just above the cast. It does feel soft and thin, like it was brand now.

She finally gets the cast cut off on the first of July, and she almost cries with relief. It makes her having to stay in the wheelchair all the more infuriating, but the doctor doesn’t even give her the okay for weight bearing exercises yet. After removing her cast, he takes more films and eyes them. 

“Your hip still needs more time. The bones are mostly knitted back together, but the dislocation damaged the ligaments in your hip joint, and they’ll take longer to get back in working order”. 

It’s disheartening, it really is. 

The Twilight Zone they watch that night is utterly unfair. Shannon feels her stomach pull with anger as she watches the man’s glasses break. 

A few days later, everyone in the neighborhood seemingly leaves their apartments to head to Bridge Park, which Miles’s family claims is the best spot to see the fireworks over the East River. It’s the first time since before that something looks very much like it did from before, Shannon thinks. 

Sharon and her pack a picnic, and join up with Miles and his mom before making their way to the section of the park along the river they call Pier 5. 

“Why’s your dad not here?” Shannon asks. 

“He always works holidays, besides he says all cops hate the Fourth of July, cause of all the drunks and vandalism.”

The park itself is packed. It does really look like it might have before everyone disappeared. 

“I haven’t seen the park full like this since I was a girl,” Mrs Morales comments when they’re setting up the blanket. They made sandwiches. The pickles have returned, but now it’s nearly impossible to find olives. No loss there in Shannon’s opinion. Mrs. Morales had also brought a big jug of lemonade. 

“People are clustering together,” a voice coming up behind them says. Steve’s hauling a stack of chairs, sweating and looking like he’s been working all morning. 

“Sorry, I was helping one of the veterans groups set up their barbecue, we’ve been at it since eight” he tell them, wiping his brow, and gesturing across the green where a group are have lit up the fire pits and are stoking the coals. Coolers full of burger patties and hot dogs sit beside them.. “We had to get here first thing in the morning or all the grills would have been taken.”

Shannon helps Miles and his mom spread their picnic blanket on a nearby spot of grass, but she can still some of their conversation. 

“Was that the same group Sam ran?” Sharon asks Steve. 

“Yes, though half of it is...and we’ve ended up wandering away from just the military bit. A couple of spouses showed up one week, an adult kid the next, and regular off the street people too. We’re basically a support group for anyone who’s lost someone now. Which is basically all of us”. 

Mrs. Morales pours two cups of lemonade, and hands them to Miles and Shannon. 

“I should get that group’s number, “ she comments, “What he said is right.”

“The stuff about people clustering?” Miles asks. 

She nods. “They’ve been sending people to as few facilities as possible at work. We got patients from as far south as Trenton. It’s not just the lack of staff, no one wants to be alone in the hospital. Old Mr. Murphy’s daughter came to see him last week, all the way from Iowa. I haven’t seen her in years.”

She has a faraway look in her eye. 

Miles gulps down his lemonade, grabs Shannon by the wrist and asks if she wants to down by the water. 

The beach is the next pier over, and while crowded, it’s got an amazing view of the river. 

“Sorry, but it’s better to get away from mom when she’s like this.”

They stop on the edge of the sand, Miles playing with the frisbee he’d pulled from his backpack before leaving. 

“Neither her or dad ever seem to have happy stories from work. This is the first holiday she’s been off in a while, and I was hoping we could just be happy today.”

He runs back a length of the sand, and throws Shannon the frisbee. It’s a good throw, and she catches it, and throws it back. Her aim isn’t quite as good, but Miles dives and manages to catch it. 

“What were your parents like?”

Shannon’s heart twinges. 

“My dad was a security guard, my mom was a teacher. I don’t know really. We were never really super close. Mom wanted me to go to a good college. Dad wanted to make sure I never got arrested. Normal I guess.”

Shannon had wondered, that morning, if the holiday might make her miss them more. But the Fourth was never really a big one for them. Most people in the neighborhood went on vacation in July, and the fireworks in Long Island were aggressively mediocre. 

Miles throws the frisbee back, and misses. Shannon glares at them as she slowly makes her way to retrieve it. 

“You’re lucky. I love my parents, I really do, but sometimes I wish they didn’t constantly go to work and see things that they’re scared of me becoming. It was bad enough before, but now they know they were really close to losing me for real”.

They go back and forth with the frisbee for a while. When they both get tired, Miles walks them over to the ice cream stand, before they go back to return to the adults. 

It’s the best mint chocolate chip Shannon has ever tasted. 

It’s one of the hottest days of the summer, but unlike the blackout days, the air is sunny and breezy instead of trapped inside over carpet. The sandwiches don’t attract bugs and the lemonade stays cold. 

The sunset is beautiful in itself, and the fireworks over the water only make it better. Shannon snaps a couple of pictures with her phone, but it won’t even compare. Sharon takes one of her and Miles dangling their feet in the river. Her mother would cringe, seeing her sticking her feet in an NYC river, but Mrs. Morales just tells them to dry off their feet and not drink any. 

Even the discovery that rolling a wheelchair on sand is nearly impossible, and the long journey to the bathrooms can’t bring her down.

By the time they pack up to walk back to the subway station, Shannon’s beat. 

Steve says goodbye, saying he has the help the rest of the veterans group clean up. 

“Happy birthday, by the way.” Sharon says before they split. 

Shannon can feel her face twist, before she bursts out with, “You were literally born on the fourth of July?”

Steve looks embarrassed, but nods. “Always felt wrong to bring it up, but it’s nice to always have people celebrating”. 

“You do realize everything you say makes you sound like an advertising character invented to sell cars right?”

Mrs. Morales hushes him, and they all leave for home. 

When August comes, so does the prospect of school.

It’s Jamie, the aide who helps out at her PT sessions, who first brings it up. 

“Are you excited about starting the new school year?”

Shannon’s confused. Technically, she didn’t even think about it. She hadn’t even technically finished fifth grade. She hadn’t even had time to think about middle school, or about how strange it was going to be one of the youngest people in the whole school, instead of just her class like normal. 

“I don’t even know how they’re going to do it, are they going to open the schools again?”

Turns out, Jamie tells her, that NYC public schools have decided to restart the school year 95% online, to reduce costs. The only time Shannon would have to schlep down to Brooklyn Middle will be to enroll, pick up her books, and to take certain tests.

It’s a strange thought, but at least it’s a few less things to worry about. She won’t have to worry about scheduling PT or doctors appointments around classes. 

Speaking of PT, doing the exercises finally stops hurting. This is, of course, when Jamie gives her a whole new set. 

(Sharon confides in her that she’s had colleagues over the years insist that PT actually stood for physical torture).

Steve comes over once or twice a week, usually with food, and Shannon brings him up to speed on all the Twilight Zone Sharon has forced on her. She really doesn’t mind anymore.

The last week of August, he tells them he’s heading back upstate for a few days. 

“Aww, then you’ll miss my birthday,” Shannon pouts. 

He apologizes by giving her her gift- a weekend pass to all the museums in the city- that few days early. She will later realize that Sharon must have told him when it was already if he already had it.

When they’re sitting on the couch, Shannon muses how easily he’s become a fixture here. What he said on the fourth was right, people really were sticking to each other much harder. 

Shannon’s birthday is the last day before school starts. 

“Do you want to buy you cake, or should we try our hand at making it?” Sharon asks her the day before.

The answer is made for them by the slightly selection at the bodega. The concoction they mix ends up perfectly edible. Shannon typically prefers chocolate, but vanilla’s fine too. And true, they could only find one can of frosting, but the middle being stuffed with canned peaches worked out. And Sharon respects Shannon begging her not to sing.

Looking down at her cake, Shannon has a flash of her cake from last year. Her mom had let her do most of it herself, supervising from the kitchen table. White cake with chocolate frosting, decorated with M&Ms. She’d been so proud of it. Mom had snapped the picture even before she wiped the chocolate from Shannon’s nose. Her big gift that year had been her bike, assembled and set on the front porch even before breakfast. Her dad had taken her aside and shown her how to inflate the tires and check the pressure. It was in pieces now, in a scrap yard somewhere, and here she was. 

That night’s Twilight Zone is weird. It’s about a guy alone on a prison planet who’s given an android woman he falls in love with.

“If he was a prisoner, why would they even bother?”

“They probably didn’t want him to go insane,” is Sharon’s guess.

“Besides, how do you fall in love with a machine?”

Sharon touches the bridge of her nose, and takes a break from the notes she was taking.

“I knew someone who did that.”  
Shannon looks at her sideways. 

“Told you I had a few stories. One of the group of us who got in trouble after the incident in Berlin was a young woman from Sokovia. She had powers that she had a hard time controlling, and the government decided that made her dangerous. It didn’t matter to them that she was practically a kid, or that she’d lost nearly everything- her family, her home. Her name was Wanda.”

Sharon looks at Shannon, choosing her words carefully it seems. Shannon’s already caught on that she said “was”.

“Wanda was in hiding in the same part of Scotland I was, but she had to be much more undercover- she was very recognizable, if I showed you a picture you might even recognize her. I brought her things sometimes, and we talked. She had grown...attached before, to one of Tony Stark’s AI experiments. They called him Vision. Calling him a robot is a bit...not right, but for lack of a better term. She wanted to see him, and I had to try and make sure they were safe.”

Sharon’s eyes are faraway, the same kind of way Mrs. Morales got at the park. 

“They’d told me the basics of what was going on, but I really didn’t know what to expect when I saw them together. And then aliens attacked, and everything went to hell. I didn’t even say goodbye to her. They’re both gone now..”

Shannon leans over and hugs her. She carefully thinks before testing her new eleven year old vocabulary. 

“Fuck those aliens.”

Sharon snorts. “Agreed. And don’t tell Steve I let you curse.”

Then episode finishes, and Shannon’s still trying to wrap her mind around it.

“She was really in love with a robot?”

“He loved her back all the same.”

It’s a melancholy end to her birthday. In bed, trying not to think about school starting tomorrow, Shannon mulls over Sharon’s words. 

Then she has a flash of her cake again, and the frosting smudge, and she feels her eyes well up with tears. 

She doesn’t know how long it will take to stop crying at everything, but she hopes it’s soon because she’s really sick of it.


End file.
